Rimetea, cel mai frumos sat din Romania

In the last weekend of September we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and visit one of the villages we had for some time on our bucket list: Rimetea.

Rimetea, the village where the sun rises twice

This wonderful village in Alba County (Torockó in Hungarian) is the only village in Romania awarded with the Europa Nostra prize of the European Commission for the preservation of the material cultural heritage. It happened in 1999, as a result of the conservation efforts made by the locals and the Hungarian NGOs involved in the project, after which 138 traditional houses were restored.

Rimetea is the only place in Romania where it is said that the sun rises twice: the first time it rises after the first ridge of Piatra Secuiului and then disappears for a short time, being covered behind the second, and then rises again.

Why do we find Rimetea the most beautiful village in Romania?

The village is located at the foot of the Trascau Mountains and almost from any place in the village you can see Piatra Secuiului – a spectacular rocky wall, over 1000 meters high.

Most of the houses in Rimetea are white with green shutters, beautifully restored, keeping the style in which they were originally built.

Most of the houses in the village have handmade painted numbers, with flowers and a few houses even have painted gates, and inside they shelter furniture or hand-painted household tools.

In the center of the village you can find the Ethnographic Museum where you can admire folk costumes from the area, hand-painted objects, but also various tools and tools used in the past by the locals. Besides these, on the balcony of the museum you can also admire the "iconic" view with Piatra Secuiului in the background, which is surreally beautiful.

What to visit in Rimetea

Besides The Ethnographic Museum, you can also visit the Watermill, but you have to ask beforehand when you can go because it is privately owned and they do not have a fixed schedule.

The village is picturesque, we advise you to cross it from one end to the other because apart from the famous white houses on Sirul de Sus Street you will also discover others with painted and sculpted gates, with courtyards full of flowers and fruit trees. We were there just in time to enjoy the ripe apples and nuts, the village abounds in such trees, so we were able to delight not only our eyes, but also our taste with the rich fruits of autumn.

Of course, if you are a sportier person you can hike to the top of Piatra Secuiului but we would not recommend it to beginners and without special hiking boots. It's pretty steep and slippery and we found it quite dangerous on the descent. We didn't manage to climb up to the top, but we'll try to do it again when we go back to the village.

Also, adrenaline lovers find in the plateaus of the depression the ideal environment for a scree with paragliding.

Where can you stay in Rimetea?

Being a touristy village, most of the houses in the village offer accommodation, you can find a lot of options, suitable for any budget. We chose the Kerekes Vendégház guesthouse, which offer decent conditions for a village (we do not expect 5-star conditions anyway when we go to the countryside), an extremely affordable price and an absolutely wonderful view. The owners are very nice, and the pension is located near the center of the village. One of the most famous accommodations in Rimetea is Kiraly Guesthouse, which you have probably seen in a lot of photos of Rimetea because it has a great view. We wanted to eat there, but they say that during the week they don't have a chef, only on weekends, but we can confirm that the pension is absolutely gorgeous.

And because we talked about food, we wanted to tell you that in the village you don't really have many restaurant options, in fact there's only one in the center and a bistro, a grocery store and a small café. You don't have to leave Rimetea until you taste the langosi from the caravan across the street from the church, they are absolutely delicious, especially those with sour cream, cheese and garlic. You can also find besides the trough in the village (the place where the animals are watered) a small shop where you can get boiled corn, kurtos kalacs and other sweets, but also some small souvenir stalls where they have dishes made by locals- we took a jar of zacusca that goes well with Csiki Sor, the local beer.

What else can you visit near Rimetea?

Coltesti

Coltesti is the neighboring village of Rimetea, where you can go to visit the Trascaului Fortress, on a much easier route than the one to Piatra Secuiului. It's true that the view is not as spectacular, but it's very nice here too. In the village you can also find Conacul Secuiului, a beautiful guesthouse where you can enjoy traditional food and the most beautiful view in the area. You can also stay here if you come to visit the area, but the prices are somewhat higher than the rest of the accommodations in the area.

If you want to eat here, you have to make a reservation in advance because it is a very popular and quite crowded location and there are very small chances to find a place.

We booked 3 days before and as the weather was warm, we ate outside with the view of the Trascau mountains in front of us. The food was ok-ish, but what we didn't like was the big waiting time because it was the weekend and was busy, so maybe it's better to go during the week. We didn't mind waiting longer normally, but then we were in a hurry to get to other village because now it's getting dark earlier and we didn't have too much time.

Cheile Valisoarei - Knights Temple Castle

Cheile Valisoarei are near Rimetea and you can go hiking here if you have time. We went especially for the Knights Temple castle, we had seen countless photos from here, but our expectations did not coincide at all with the reality on the spot. The castle is actually a sad hotel that is now being restored and the surroundings are dirty, everything looks desolate. In the pictures on the hill you can see it quite small and it looks wow, but the reality on the spot is quite different. We were disappointed and we were sorry that we climbed so much... for nothing.

Dumesti

Near Rimetea we had read on some blogs that there would be another beautiful village, Dumesti. We put it on the GPS after we left Conacul Secuiesc (where we found it bizarre that no one had heard of it). The reason we asked about the village there is the extremely poor connection of the internet. You don't have signal so you have to rely more on the guidance of the locals. Finally, after we caught a little signal to charge the location we started our route to Dumesti and at some point the GPS guided us to turn left on a path that sinks through the forest, quite narrow even for pedestrians. We didn't know what to do, but just then, an oncoming car appeared and told us that they went on the main road up to the waterfall.

We didn't know about any waterfall, but we were glad to hear that there is a bonus waterfall, outside the village. When we got to the top we saw a few groups camping and that's about it. No houses, no locals, no nothing. We asked them about Dumesti and nobody knew anything but they showed us how to get to the Vanatarile Ponorului waterfall, which also had a bookmark, so we found it easy. Very nice, but we wanted to find the village. We looked in absolutely all directions and only in the valley there were a few scattered houses, but there was no way to get there, neither on your feet nor by car.

We decided to go back and when we arrived in Salciua we asked several locals about Dumesti. They hadn't heard, they shrugged, until an elderly gentleman unraveled the mystery of us: there is no village of Dumesti, it's just a hamlet where there are a few old people who live isolated from the rest of the community and you can not get there by car in any way. He said that in the past they used to go with the oxen chalets, but now the road is broken and anyway, we have nothing to see there. We thanked him and we understood that, in fact tourists call Dumesti what is now the camping area and the 2-3 abandoned stables.

The Roman Thermal Baths Germisara

On the way back to Bucharest we deviated a little to visit another place that we had on the wish list- the Romanian Thermal Baths in Geoagiu. The place is unique, absolutely gorgeous, but it seems left in shambles, it is also quite dirty, but anyway it is worth a visit, it does not look like anything we have seen so far.

Clocota Waterfall

When we were heading to Baile Termale we also saw an indicator to Clocota waterfall that sounds vaguely known to us because we had read about it before, but when we arrived on the spot we had a nice surprise. The waterfall is quite large and absolutely gorgeous, the most spectacular we have seen in Romania, we liked it more than Bigar.

We have already made our plan and next year we want to return to Rimetea for some trails, especially for Cheile Rametului, which is spectacular, but we couldn't do it now because it wasn't so warm to walk through water.

Have you visited Rimetea?